CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / GOVERNOR : Brown Middle-Class Theme Questioned

Both sides in the gubernatorial race chose Orange County to do battle Wednesday, with Democrat Kathleen Brown appealing to the middle class during a speech on the economy while a high-profile surrogate for Gov. Pete Wilson inferred that Brown has shifted her focus to middle-income voters on the advice of President Clinton’s pollster.

During a hastily called news conference at the Hyatt Regency Irvine, where Brown was to deliver a luncheon speech on her economic recovery plan, New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican, said the state treasurer’s middle-income message was devised by the Democratic National Committee in order to help party members win elections in November.

“I have not seen it as being a major concern of (Brown’s) until now,” Whitman said. “All of a sudden, now it’s a major concern. That’s something that voters should watch very closely.”

Brown later contended that Wilson was hiding behind his wife and Whitman while avoiding her challenge to five debates.

Before her speech to the nonpartisan, nonprofit Orange County Forum, Brown told reporters: “Pete Wilson is unleashing Gayle Wilson, Christine Todd Whitman and every person he can find to attack me. . . . Why doesn’t Pete Wilson come out and debate me like a man?”

Michael Reese, Brown’s deputy campaign manager, said that since the start of the campaign, Brown has consistently talked about the economy, crime, education and about “how failures (on these issues) are undermining the middle class.”

Brown is expected to discuss specifics of her economic recovery strategy for Southern California at campaign appearances today in Los Angeles and Riverside counties.

In what was billed as a preview of her proposal--but was more a recap of her previously disclosed plan to provide incentives for economic growth statewide--Brown told the Orange County audience that a separate economic strategy is needed for Southern California because it has been hardest hit by the recession.

Hoping to demonstrate how the “California dream” has faded, Brown said that since Wilson took office, Orange County’s unemployment rate has increased by 65%--now at 6.6%--and that home and business foreclosures have gone up by 743%, with 3,000 occurring this year alone.

“No wonder people are scared, no wonder they are angry, and no wonder they are frustrated,” Brown said. “I think that these times call for a governor who understands those fears, who can explain to our workers, explain to our businesses, explain to our people what is happening to our economy and lay out a plan and then fight to get us where we need to go.”

Brown has proposed new industries, such as “advanced transportation” systems, as well as shoring up the aerospace industry that has suffered because of defense budget cutbacks.

The audience of about 500--polite but generally unenthusiastic--applauded Brown when she said she supports a ban on the sale and possession of assault weapons and when she pledged to carry out the death penalty even though she personally opposes it.

“I am not going to play politics with you, I am not going to play politics with the death penalty, I am not going to be playing politics with your lives,” Brown said. “I am going to uphold the law, uphold the death penalty.”

While trying to focus the campaign debate on the sagging economy, Brown has included other issues, such as education, crime and immigration, in her economic recovery package. But it is Wilson who set the campaign agenda early on by focusing on crime, welfare reform and immigration and who made Brown’s personal objection to the death penalty a campaign issue.

During the earlier news conference by Whitman, the New Jersey governor cited California’s “three strikes” sentencing law as one that helps define Wilson’s leadership on issues. Whitman, considered a rising star in the GOP, was in Texas earlier this week campaigning for Republican gubernatorial candidate George W. Bush, son of the former President, who is challenging Gov. Ann Richards.

Following Whitman’s news conference, the Wilson campaign claimed that Brown’s “middle-income voter” theme had emerged only after Clinton pollster Stanley Greenberg detailed in a July memo how Democrats could win elections in different regions of the country.

The Greenberg memo stated that in hypothetical races in the deep South and West Coast, “the Democratic incumbent fighting for the middle-class agenda was seen as nearly 20 points more convincing than the Republican attacking big taxes, gays or big government.”

Despite the Brown campaign’s assertion that the middle-income message has always been their main theme, Wilson campaign spokesman Dan Schnur said the theme did not emerge in their campaign commercials until a few weeks ago.

Schnur said that if Clinton follows through with plans to help Brown raise money in California this month, he will be watched “to see whether his lips are moving or not.”